Minnesota Majority blasts high court for dismissing lawsuit

The conservative coalition that filed suit in May against Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and 31 county auditors is accusing the Minnesota Supreme Court of dismissing the lawsuit Thursday to spare itself “the embarrassment of having to acknowledge major election system problems after just issuing its decision in the (Norm Coleman-Al Franken) contest.”

The Minnesota Majority, which describes itself as a “traditional values” advocacy group, joined eight individuals as plaintiffs in the suit (three of them Republican state representatives) in claiming that the state’s voter registration system has not been accurately updated and that vote totals from canvassing boards in last fall’s election exceeded the stated number of registered voters by more than 40,000.

“Here you have a major U.S. Senate race being decided by just a few hundred votes, and along comes our case citing the fact that the secretary of state has been unable to account for tens of thousands of voters in the 2008 election,” Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis said in a statement. “You can see why the court might not want to touch this case with a 10-foot pole.”

Under federal law, the state’s voter registration system is supposed to
be updated immediately after an election, and state law says such
updates should be done within six weeks, Minnesota Majority charged in
its lawsuit that 17 counties hadn’t filed reports to the registration
system, and another eight counties — including the two largest,
Hennepin and Ramsey — reported more ballots than they had registered
voters.

Davis said his group plans to continue to seek an investigation into “irregularities” in Minnesota’s election records.